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Basecamp API

Recently, Basecamp and activeCollab issued updates to their project management software, both of which affect TimeThis.

In the case of Basecamp, the new upgrade eliminates time tracking altogether. The folks at 37signals who own Basecamp say they don’t track time, they don’t understand it so they didn’t include it in the new version.

In the meantime, TimeThis continues to work properly under Basecamp Classic and we recommend sticking with that for now.

We will continue to support TimeThis for the Classic version and if in the future 37signals decides to open up the API for time tracking support in the new Basecamp software, we will support that as well.

As for activeCollab, their API wrapper library has not been updated to work with the new upgrade to activeCollab 3.0 and therefore does not work with TimeThis.

There are no issues with TimeThis on the earlier 2.0 branch and again, we recommend using that for now.

We are following changes closely and will update our own info on the TimeThis blog as more information is gleaned. Please subscribe to our RSS feed to receive these important updates.

We are hopeful both Basecamp and activeCollab will resolve these issues quickly.

UPDATE (Dec. 16, 2010): All Basecamp connections are now required to be secure connections. If you are using Basecamp, make sure that the API URL path entered in the settings panel begins with https://.

It’s the morning of September 2 here in Virginia, and we’re anxiously watching the path of Hurricane Earl to see if it will wreak havoc over our three-day weekend (Monday’s Labor Day here in the U.S.). We sincerely hope that your experience with TimeThis has not been ruined by an “Earl” of another sort. Unlike the hurricane (have you seen this image taken from the International Space Station?), this kind of “Earl” is easy to overlook.

This is your API URL (yeah, we love homophonic puns). Why is it easy to overlook as a possible cause for problems between TimeThis and either activeCollab or Basecamp? Because just one character can mean the difference between success and not-success.

This means that if your API URL begins with http://, then the URL as entered on the TimeThis Server Settings tab of the TimeThis settings panel needs to begin with http:// — conversely, if the URL begins with https://, then it needs to begin with https:// in the application’s settings.

And, of course, an http:// and https:// mismatch gets you a date with Earl.

If you’ve downloaded TimeThis and cannot get it to talk back and forth with Basecamp (retrieve projects, submit time, etc.), there’s a good possibility that API access has not been enabled for your Basecamp account.

So how do you enable API access? It’s pretty simple, but there’s one very important point to be made up front: only the Basecamp account owner has the capability of making this change. So if you’re not the account owner, pass along these instructions to him or her.

If you are the Basecamp account owner, log in to your account and click the “Account (Upgrade/Billing)” tab in the upper righthand corner (note: it may just say “Account”).

Scroll down the page to the section labeled “Basecamp API“.

Check the box indicating that you’ve read the “API Terms” section of the Basecamp terms of service (after reading them, of course), and then hit the button to enable the Basecamp API for your account.

Voilà—your Basecamp API has been enabled. Once you enter your Basecamp API URL and Key in the Server Settings tab of the TimeThis settings panel (find out how), TimeThis will be able to retrieve projects from and post time to your Basecamp account.